Charles Montgomery Plantagenet Schicklgruber Burns[11], also known as Monty Burns, Montgomery Burns, C.M. Burns and Mr. Burns, is an antagonist of The Simpsons and one of the minor characters of The Simpsons Movie.

Burns is a prominent businessman who is known for being the owner and chairman of the Springfield Nuclear Power Plant. Burns is Springfield's wealthiest and most powerful citizen. His net worth has been stated to be in the billions and in one instance was pegged at exactly $1,800,037,022[12], although it has fluctuated throughout the series.

He had, on three occasions, lost his entire fortune [13][14][15], and at another time slipped to "only" $996 million ($996,036,000), leading to his expulsion from Billionaire Camp.[12] Burns is very elderly and physically frail but employs relentless and ruthless tactics to get whatever he wants.

Biography

Burns' paternal family is of Scottish descent while his maternal family is of Scottish, German, and supposedly Mexican descent (although this is contradicted many times). As a child, Burns lived happily in a northern state with his natural parents Clifford and Daphne Burns as the second-youngest of 12 children, the youngest being George Burns, and his teddy bear Bobo. As a child, Burns was so jubilant and amiable that his parents called him "Happy".[18]

At a young age, he left his family to live with a twisted and heartless billionaire, who was actually his grandfather and a former slaveholder named Colonel Wainwright Montgomery Burns, who owned an "atom mill" in Springfield, where laborers split atoms by hitting anvils with sledgehammers. Presumably, nine of his other siblings also accompanied him, although they died under "suspicious circumstances", leaving himself as the sole heir to the family fortune.

Burns lived a life of privilege and would amuse himself by injuring hapless immigrant laborers; it appears that Wainwright was directly responsible for turning Charles Montgomery from a pleasant child into a cold-hearted man, much like himself. Burns later attended Yale for college, where he studied science and business, played on the varsity football team, and was inducted into the Skull and Bones secret society. Burns graduated from Yale University in 1914. He also bore a grudge against Daphne Burns for having an extramarital affair with President William Howard Taft, which was apparently strong for him to attempt to murder his mother by "pulling the plug", not expecting her to live for five more decades.[19]

In 1936, he received the second Social Security number and disliked President Franklin D. Roosevelt for receiving the first one.

In 1939, at Burns' Yale University reunion, he had an affair with the daughter of an old flame named Lily Bancroft. She would later bear his long-lost child, Larry Burns, who was given up for adoption and would later enter Burns' life briefly.[20]

After Germany invaded Poland in 1939, Burns joined the SS.[21] However, Burns defected and fled Germany. Because of his American heritage, he returned to the United States in 1941, just days after the US declared war on Germany, and enlisted in the U.S. Army.[22]

Burns served in the Flying Hellfish during World War II, holding the rank of private after being demoted for his involvement in a romantic scandal and attempting to block a probe from J. Edgar Hoover. Burns is proud of having manufactured shells for the Nazis, seeing himself as being superior to Oskar Schindler because his shells "worked, dammit!".[23]

Burns and Abraham Simpson II during WWII

A member of Springfield's Flying Hellfish battalion, he saw action in the Ardennes during the Battle of the Bulge, serving under Sergeant Abraham Simpson II. He was later transferred to the South Pacific with part of his squad. During the closing years of the war, when his platoon was clearing out a German-occupied castle, Burns came across several valuable portraits. Since they could not choose on who they should go to, they planned to enter into a tontine, from which Burns was removed after the war through being dishonorably discharged when he tried to kill Abe. The paintings were later handed back to a German whose relatives owned them.[24]

Mr. Burns showing off his expensive clothing

At the end of World War II, he was personally hired by President Harry Truman to transport a specially-printed trillion-dollar bill to Europe as the United States' contribution to the reconstruction of the continent. As the United States' richest citizen, Burns was thought to be also the most trustworthy, which turned out to be just a false rumor. Subsequently, Europe had never managed to reconstruct and Burns absconded with the bill and kept it in his possession for many years until it was lost to Fidel Castro.[25]

Burns spent time as a biochemist and bio-terrorist before opening the Springfield Nuclear Power Plant. By 1964, he became a professor at Springfield University, and was the owner of a biological weapons laboratory since 1965 until it was destroyed by peace activists, including Homer's mother, Mona Simpson.[27]

In 1968, Burns opened the Springfield Nuclear Power Plant with his assistant, Waylon Smithers Sr. In summer of that year, the plant suffered a meltdown, and almost exploded. Smithers Sr. chose to sacrifice himself to save the plant, along with his son and town. Burns currently owns the plant, although he has parted with it several times, including when he sold it to German investors (Hans, Fritz and Horst), and when the bank foreclosed on it.[28] The plant was also legally owned at one point by a canary bird named Canary M. Burns to protect Mr. Burns from responsibility for any wrongdoing by the power plant.[29] At some point during his ownership of the plant, Mr. Burns apparently recruited a Brazilian soccer team to work at the nuclear power plant's reactor core after their plane had crashed in front of his property (an act that was against the laws of the Department of Labor), as well as hiring a duck named Stewart.[30]

Adult Burns in his office

Character

Personality

Mr. Burns in his typical evil mood

Mr. Burns embodies a number of stereotypes about a corporate businessperson America, as he has an unquenchable desire to increase his own wealth and power. Burns also embodies the stereotype of a manager by forgetting his employees' names (especially Homer's, despite Homer appearing that he interacts more than Burns does with most of his employees), though this can be attributed to his senility. Burns is also unconcerned for their safety and well-being (the plant, for example, is rife with obvious safety violations).

Burns kissing Mr. Teeny

Because Burns has billions of dollars, he is incredibly greedy as well as incredibly stingy, the latter trait being best demonstrated by his often releasing his attack dogs, the hounds, on those requesting charity. He uses his wealth on absurdly extravagant things, such as a life-size chess set (with humans as pieces),[31] using the town's snow plows to play a soccer-type game,[32] and having "money fights" with Smithers.[33] Also due to his riches, Mr. Burns is very stingy and averse to rewarding good deeds with money. His exact status on his stinginess has varied, however, especially when made to pay fines. When undergoing a state-level nuclear inspection, Mr. Burns when learning the cost to pay off the 342 safety violations to get rid of them as being $56 million got so incensed and depressed at having to pay the fines (with his exact reaction implying the possibility that he didn't have that amount of cash on him) that he proceeded to drink himself to a stupor until Homer suggested he run for governor.[34] On the other hand, when he was made to pay a $3 million fine for illegally dumping nuclear waste in a public park, Mr. Burns largely took the whole thing in stride, casually telling Smithers to get his wallet out of his restraints' pocket, and then offered to take the Justice statue in exchange (with Roy Snyder agreeing to these terms).[35] It is heavily implied that the reason why Mr. Burns was vicious towards his own employees and presumably most of Springfield if not all of humanity is because his employees and possibly everyone else have frequently abused his trust to goof off earlier.[36]

Burns appears to be completely removed from modern conventions and, sometimes, reality. Although he is pure evil, he sometimes loses his train of thought completely, becoming a helpless old man and sometimes actually a nice, caring person. He continually fails to remember who Homer is, despite the two having interacted extensively. Not even Homer spray-painting "I AM HOMER SIMPSON" on Burns' office wall was sufficient to get Burns to remember Homer's name, this incident only resulting in an altercation. In addition, Mr. Burns, when planning his Sun Blocker plan shortly after firing Smithers, and while literally stomping down on potential rivals at his model of Springfield, proceeded to stamp down on one of the cooling towers of the plant and yell "Take that, Springfield Nuclear Power Pl..." before realizing that the plant was actually already under his control and then sheepishly muttered "Oh, fiddlesticks!"[37]

Burns is also, for the most part, unaware of the townspeople's general hatred of him. He also tends to be extremely selfish and does not even seem to realize or even care about his selfish actions. However, he also had redeemable traits despite his status as pure evil; He was good friends with Simon Woosterfield, and gave Bart advice on what was going on in his family (although at that time, he had mistaken Bart for Simon due to the two switching places),[38] and he also once supplied his workers, as part of Employee Appreciation Day, a trip to the drag racing track, although this largely backfired when Lenny Leonard, while drunk, inadvertently terrorized Mr. Burns when trying to thank him for the great evening.[39] He also willingly allowed Smithers to take a week off from the Power Plant and presumably his duties as Mr. Burns' primary caregiver to perform in a Malibu Stacy musical he wrote and directed at the Alberquerque Theater in New Mexico, despite his personally thinking that the play would fail due to its subject matter,[40] and earlier also prevented Smithers from drowning himself in a mental breakdown from perceived failure in defending him or doing basic duties and even suggested he take a vacation.[39]

He is also shown to hate the lawyers he hires in large part because of the latter party's unethical practices, and only has them available under necessity. At one point, in an uncharacteristic act of charity, he also managed to pay for a then-dangerously overweight Homer Simpson's liposuction to make him comparatively thin again to repay the latter for reducing a potentially catastrophic Chernobyl-style nuclear meltdown at the plant to "a mere Three-Mile Island" (although it should be noted that he did this task after Homer failed to do one sit-up).[41] In addition, during Frank Grimes' last moments when he, having entered a psychotic break, ended up grabbing extremely high voltage cables under the delusion that he was Homer Simpson, Burns was seen grimacing at the result alongside Homer Simpson, Smithers, and at least two other workers.[42] In addition, Mr. Burns when watching a play Skinner organized to get him to provide funds for the then-recently closed Springfield Elementary School, reacted with horror after the Chef, out of incompetence caused by the school being closed, placed rat poison into broth instead of salt, before Skinner pointed out that Mr. Burns could have ingested it.[43] Similarly, when Homer had a manatee pose as himself, Mr. Burns was shown to befriend him and, when learning he was about to die from dehydration, he immediately requested they give the manatee a sponge bath.[44]

Burns also proceeded to make sure Homer went to college for a Nuclear 101 course so that he can be allowed to keep his job, even going as far as to use his holding a chair at Springfield University to pull several strings to make sure he was enrolled (though it should be noted that he mostly did it for somewhat selfish reasons, as he implied that if Homer did not go to college, then the nuclear power plant would be shut down as a result of Homer's incompetence).[45] He also organized a team-building exercise upon witnessing first hand his employees failing to clear the power plant during a fire drill within fifteen minutes (especially when the optimal clearance time was forty-five seconds), and was genuinely disgusted with his employees' actions beforehand (in particular, Homer blocking the fire escape with a bench).[46] In addition, when Homer was revealed to have had mental trauma caused by his accidental discovery of Waylon Smithers, Sr.'s half-decayed corpse in a local watering hole that he was swimming at that got re-exposed during a hypnotist session, Mr. Burns also supplied a video tape explaining how Waylon Smithers, Sr. died to help Homer recover from the trauma (although he also largely did it because they assumed that Mr. Burns had him murdered due to the place where Smithers' body was discovered being connected directly to Mr. Burns' office, with the alternative being facing jail time, and thus wanted to clear his own name as well.).

Smithers kissing Mr. Burns

Mr. Burns uses archaic phrases and antiquated expressions that have either changed meanings or fallen out of common usage in American English, including score (meaning 20), post-haste (quickly),[47] petroleum distillate (gasoline),[48] gay (jolly, which also caused Smithers quite a scare due to the latter initially thinking he asked if he was going to do a homosexual activity during the weekend),[49] dean (principal), velocitator and deceleratrix (a car's accelerator and brake),[50] jumping box and picto-tube (television), Automated Telemachineomeratron(Automated Teller Machine/ATM), [51] autogyro (helicopter),[52] and the New York Nine (New York Yankees).[53] His use of "ahoy-hoy" when answering the telephone follows the suggestion of its inventor, Alexander Graham Bell, who felt "ahoy" should be the initial greeting instead of "Hello". He also calls Smithers and says "Smithers, come here, I want you", a take on what are reputedly the first words spoken by Alexander Graham Bell on his telephone ("Mr. Watson, come here, I want to see you.").[54]

He is out-of-touch with modern technology and behavior: he practices phrenology,[55] writes with a quill pen, drives a 1936 Stutz Bearcat while wearing an Edwardian motorist outfit which includes a hat, driving gloves and goggles,[56] carries a mace(and occasionally an obsolete Ruger Desert Eagle Model I[16]) for self-defense,[57] and, when not chauffeured, drives without regard to traffic laws in the manner of early 20th century motorists.[58] His driver license expired in 1909 (he even is still in the possession of several useless items from the same era, such as a Ticket Stub from the silent film "Tillie's Punctured Romance" and his SS ID Card from his time as a Gestapo Officer).

Burns appears to be unaware of 20th century political and private developments, such as Fidel Castro becoming President of Cuba,[59] Siam becoming Thailand,[60]India gaining its independence from the British Empire, New Mexico becoming a state,[40] the Wall Street Crash of 1929 (with him also blaming Smithers for not warning him about the crash despite the fact that, as Smithers pointed out, the event in question occurred 25 years before he was even born and thus was in absolutely no position to warn him of the event),[61] Idlewild Airport becoming JFK Airport,[62] the extinction of the dodo,[63] confusing The Ramones with The Rolling Stones ("have the Rolling Stones killed"),[64] and the occurrence of the 1939 World's Fair.[65] Despite serving in World War II, he was unaware (or had forgotten) that Archduke Franz Ferdinand was assassinated, prompting World War I. He also was shown to be unaware of more contemporary developments, such as the musicals "Cats" and "The King and I" (where he sarcastically suggested that Smithers try making musicals relating to the common housecat and the King of Siam regarding his learning that Smithers did a musical based on Malibu Stacy).[40] Humorously, he has also asked a vending machine for taffy, thinking its like a candy shop.

He also believes that some social institutions and inventions are novel or nonexistent, such as musicals about "the common cat" and "the King of Siam",[70] the Packard automobile,[71] the Fire Department,[72] ice cream (or, as he calls it, "iced cream"),[73] vending machines, recycling,[74] strip clubs, the Dumont,[75] the word "into", silent films like the 1929 Lulu,[76] and the synonymy of ketchup and catsup.[77] While trying to chat up Gloria Jailbird, Burns offers to play the clavichord and show stereopticon images of the Crimean War.[78]

Mr. Burns' office

Health

Mr. Burns strangling Homer in a loving and kindly fashion

Due to his vast wealth, Mr. Burns has access to the best health care anyone in Springfield could ever receive. He employs elaborate medical methods, such as frequently replacing his shins and pickling his brain in vinegar, all forcing his body to continue functioning long after its natural expiration date. Due to his unnaturally long life, Burns has numerous physical ailments and health problems, or more accurately, he has every physical ailment and health problem, including several discovered in him. He is often to the point where he seems to straddle the line between life and death. The Mayo Clinic diagnosed Burns with "Three Stooges Syndrome", where a delicate state of homeostasis is created by the presence in his body of every disease known to man cancel each other out. Mr. Burns took this as being invincible, although the doctor who told him this implied that the slightest breeze could kill him.[79]

Physically weak, he often has great difficulty performing the most basic physical tasks, such as giving a thumbs up, receiving a hug, crushing a paper cup,[80] or stepping on an insect.[81] He is weak enough to be pushed over by an ant[82] or a high-five, or pushed down by a sponge scrub on his head (although he was able to eventually get up in the latter case).[83] In addition, he was frail enough that even an ant was able to overpower him and knock him on his feet when he tried to stamp it. He has a hunched back and his vertebral column is visible when he is viewed from the side. His exposure to radiation during his lifetime of working at the plant has given his skin a healthy green glow and left him infertile and as impotent as a Nevada boxing commissioner.[84] A 1,000 dollar bill dispensed from an ATM bruised him, leaving a reverse imprint of the bill on his chest.[85] When Burns was incarcerated at the Springfield Penitentiary, when he was getting a mugshot, the camera flash was able to slam him against a wall and knock him out.[86]

Burns was once mistaken for an alien after his weekly medical treatments

His organs have grown immensely weak over the years: his heart is black and desiccated, it barely beats or does not beat at all, and is shrunken to the size of a cherry. Burns' blood type is double-O negative.[87] When his finger is pricked, he bleeds dust, and when his arm is poked with a needle, it passes through his arm like meringue.[88] A chunk of Burns' brain once fell out through his ear. One time, his lungs came out through his mouth and acted as an airbag.[89] On another occasion, he indicated in an off-hand manner that he only has a single lung.[90] If he is not careful, fluid can build up in his hands, causing them to swell to enormous proportions, and his fingers have been shown to flap in the breeze released from a bowling ball dispenser.[91] It has been revealed that if Burns sweats even one drop, he could die of dehydration unless he takes a bath immediately.[92] Burns had also lost body parts due to leprosy (one example is when he lost an entire fingernail in a cup).[93] Both his legs have a crease in them, down the entire length.[94] Even the mere act of forceful spitting in shock was enough to drain him of his body liquids to such an extent that he appeared severely wrinkled, thus requiring Smithers to spray him with moisturizer to instantly rejuvenate his face.[95] Burns was once persuaded into giving Ralph Wiggum a piece of candy, but after he does, his skull collapses and he nearly dies. He then weakly steals the candy back and regains his health.[96] Apparently, the only reason that he could survive was due to hate, and he could not give out his kindness without getting killed as a result.

Medical treatment

Mr. Burns' medical treatment includes a weekly procedure that he goes through every Friday evening after work. First, his chiropractors perform a slight spinal adjustment. Then, a team of doctors administers eye drops in his eyes (which causes his pupils to dilate very huge), painkillers, and a painful vocal chord scraping (that is done by Dr. Nick); its purpose is to postpone his death for one week. This makes him become temporarily "nice". He also glows green, a result of working in a nuclear plant for ages. Burns' appearance once caused Homer to mistake him for an alien.[97] He also had his brain flushed out with vinegar and his eyes "re-balled".[98] Though Burns needs double O-negative blood, he stated (in song) that he took blood from sheep.[99] Burns' knees were also sent out to be repaired at a "shop".[100] His dentures replace themselves.

He once broke all his bones after falling from his office window and being crushed by his stuffed polar bear during a fight between Smithers and Homer.[101] On rare occasions, he has displayed great strength and skill, such as when he managed to single-handily capture the Loch Ness Monster (though it was never explained how he did so or seen on-screen)[102] and when he rescued his girlfriend, Gloria Jailbird, from a burning building (although she wound up carrying him out of the blaze).[103]

Career

Burns is almost entirely work-oriented. At the nuclear plant, Burns spends most of time in his office, monitoring his employees via closed circuit security cameras. In his office, he keeps a team of ten high-priced lawyers, a scale model of Springfield,[104] a special microbe-resistant chamber,[105] a two-seat escape pod, and the "League of Evil" - a sinister cabal whose members are long deceased, but whose skeletons remain.[106] The booby traps in Burns' office include cricket poison, a secret trapdoor (though he sometimes forgets where it is and was once under renovation[107]), a catapult that fires 100 gram weights, and a ceiling-mounted suction tube, which he can use to transport dissident workers to Morocco.[108] He is also a loan officer at the Springfield Nuclear Power Plant Employees’ Credit Union.[109][110]

Kent Brockman also credits Burns with having stolen Christmas from 1981 to 1985.[111] It was once suggested that he did so again.[112] He also claims to have participated in the Boston Tea Party.

As evidenced by his role in the series, Burns is an extremely clever businessman who has owned or co-owned a number of business ventures and companies in Springfield, including the Monty Burns Casino (later demolished),[113] the Little Lisa Recycling Plant,[114] the Burns Slant Drilling Co.,[115] Burns Media,[116] the electric company, the water works and even a hotel on Baltic Avenue.[117] He also operated the Burns Germ Warfare Laboratory (which was destroyed by Mona Simpson and a group of protesters).

He owns the rights to the song, White Christmas, after blowing the chance to buy Picasso's painting Guernica, but the song ended up earning him billions; one of many possible results of his riches (other than his family inheritance after being the youngest of a large family - who all died - and numerous other examples).[118] Burns has used his power and wealth to blackmail and bribe various members of Springfield, including Mayor Quimby, as well as safety inspectors.[119] He once attempted to block out the sun to force Springfield residents to increase their use of electricity produced by the nuclear plant and was subsequently shot by Maggie. The town is routinely subject to Burns' abuse, and there is a general dislike of him throughout the town.[120] In The Simpsons: Hit & Run, during mission 4 in Level 7, it is implied that he had a business partner that he killed. When Homer goes to his office, Mr. Burns mistakes him for the ghost of his former partner.

Other than owning business ventures, he does show that he does his own work that is non-related to business management. In one photo he is shown standing behind a desk that holds a group of chemistry beakers on it when he was starting to lose his hair. When he lost his fortune, he has worked to get it back; his fortune rebuilding work is based around recycling and even working as a busboy at Moe's Tavern (although, he only managed to get a job here, and found a bag of gold coins which helped him regain his fortune). He also served in the military (both Nazi Schutzstaffel and United States Army). At one point during the 1920s, he was an author who wrote The Rungs of Ruthlessness, although he mentions that "in those days they would give a book contract to any CEO with a bonsai tree", implying that he was a CEO of a company at that time (which, given his role in the show, isn't surprising).

Burns' bedroom in Burns Manor

Residence

Burns resides in a vast, ornate mansion on an immense estate known as Burns Manor, located at 1000 Mammon Lane, on the corner of Croesus and Mammon streets in the Springfield Heights district. It is protected by a high wall, an electrified fence and a pack of vicious attack dogs known as The Hounds, one of them is named Winston.

Burns Manor

He usually releases the whole lot of hounds towards guests (implied only to drive out the guests from the house and without the actual intention of hurting the guests[121]). He has at least one 30+ year old dog named Crippler, who specialized in attacking hippies, but is now so old he has trouble walking. If a guest put him in a particularly good mood, he will return the favor by significantly reducing the amount of hounds released to one.[122] At times, he has employed for protecting a force of Wizard of Oz - style monkey guards, a personal paramilitary force, a riot police squad and a robotic Richard Simmons.[123]

The interior of the mansion includes a room containing a thousand monkeys at a thousand typewriters,[124] a bottomless pit, a hedge maze, a moat, bleached hardwood floors,[125] a human chessboard,[126] the largest television in the free world, a "Hall of Patriots" that commemorates his ancestors,[127] a laboratory, a botanical garden of vultures bearing his likeness, a safe containing a Beefeater guard,[128] a theater that is showing round-the-clock movies and shows which plays regardless whether there is an audience or not, a TV studio and a CCTV room. His residence also contains a closet full of clothes made from many different types of animals, such as a vest made from a gorilla's chest and loafers made from gophers.[129]

The mansion is also home to many rare historical artifacts including the only existing nude photo of Mark Twain, [130] the suit that Charlie Chaplin was buried in,[131] King Arthur's mythical sword Excalibur, and a rare first draft of the Constitution with the word "suckers" in it.[132]

Relationships

Burns and Gloria

Burns has been engaged at least three times: A woman named Gertrude who died of loneliness and rabies,[134] to Jacqueline Bouvier,[135] and to a policewoman named Gloria Jailbird.[136] Though when he tells Homer about Gertrude, he says that he was her fiancé, but he implies that they were married, as he says he missed their wedding, their honeymoon and their divorce due to working so hard. He was once involved with a fellow student during his time at Yale University named Mimsy Bancroft, and then later had an affair with her daughter, Lily.[137] He once had an affair with Countess von Zeppelin, as he slept with her one time.[138] He also once in love with Marge, and pursued a relationship with her, but stopped once he discovered that Marge was married. Agnes Skinner revealed that she once had an affair with Mr. Burns during the Great Depression ("let him feel me up").[139] Burns once caught the attention of Selma when she discovers that Burns is single.[140]

Family

Charles Montgomery Burns was born to Clifford Burns and Daphne Burns (before the marriage, her maiden name was Daphne Charles (hence Mr. Burns' first name Charles)).

If we carry on, we find out that Homer is also Burns' grandmother's sister-in-law (who is also her second cousin)'s grandmother's brother's fourth great grandson.

Also, Mr. Burns and Homer are actually related by marriage (which makes Bart being Burns' heir extremely ironic, because Bart would be related to him).

Burns family tree

Mr. Burns had a strained relationship with his own mother, whom he apparently tried to kill at least once, for having had an affair with President Taft.[141] When he was asked the cause of his parents' deaths, he replied: "Got in my way".[79]

Organizations

Mr. Burns is served a three-eyed fish while running for governor

Mr. Burns is a member of various organizations. In his early years, while he was a college student at Yale University, he was a member of the Skull and Bones society. During World War II, Burns became a member of the Flying Hellfish squad, a group of soldiers who entered into a tontine regarding the ownership of German artwork. Burns was a member of the Stonecutters until it disbanded, at which time he joined the secret society that succeeded it: The Ancient Mystic Society of No Homers (One source of dislike of Burns for the "Stonecutters" is that despite his wealth and greed, he is outranked by Lenny). He is currently the head of the Springfield Republican Party and once headed a short-lived religion. He is also a member of the "Excludes Club", the Springfield Golf and Country Club, and the National Rifle Association. He holds a chair (a demonic throne with snarling dogs chained to it) at Springfield University and controls an anti-democratic paramilitary force in Latin America.

Burns attended the annual Billionaire's Retreat, where he won the Austin Celtics basketball team from The Rich Texan in a poker game. After severely mismanaging the team, he lost nearly half his net worth. At the following year's retreat, it was discovered he was no longer a billionaire. He was ejected from the camp, and thrown over a wall into the slack-jawed millionaire's camp.[12]

Burns tried to run for Governor until Marge ruined his chances by serving a three-eyed fish (an example of the adverse effects of the nuclear plant) for dinner in front of the media. At the end, he echoes Charles Foster Kane by crying out his name in rage and vows for the rest of his life to make Homer Simpson's life miserable.[142]

Non-Canon

The contents of this article or section are considered to be non-canon and therefore may not have actually happened/existed.

Comics

In the Simpsons Comics 69 story, "In Burn$ We Tru$t", he takes over the First Church of Springfield, which he uses in order to help spread his influence, with him stating that it is a sin for all environmental organizations, including the Environmental Protection Agency, Green Peace, and "Lisa Simpson's Tree Hugging Society". It is later revealed that he plans to ascend to the position of Pope, so that he can have tax-free access to all of the Vatican gold. However, when he learns that the church is not Catholic, he promptly quits (much to everyone's glee), but only on the condition that Reverend Lovejoy will grant him permission to Heaven when he dies. Eventually, he agrees, but it is comically revealed that Mr. Burns can only go to Dog Heaven when he dies. Later, it is shown in Dog Heaven (a.k.a. Cat Hell) that Mr. Burns is running around, pretending to be a dog, hoping to "rise up the alpha dog ladder!"

Future

Mr. Burns in the future

Mr. Burns is later cryogenically frozen at the age of 119. Scientists work to find a cure for 17 stab wounds to the back so that he can be thawed out and cured. He was cured in time to attend Lisa Simpson's wedding. However, he is not completely thawed, as when he tries to sit down, he snaps in half, which is also cured.[144]

At the age of 112, he is a shut-in who sponsors a Yale scholarship as punishment for stealing Christmas. He keeps diamonds to have them changed into Earth's most precious mineral of the age: coal. His home is also guarded by a large group of flying unicorn-clam creatures (uni-clams).[145] It has been shown that Burns will continue living some billions of years into the future, albeit in the form of a partial android.[146] In 70,000,000, he dies and goes to Dog Heaven, which was caused by offering to give the church back to Reverend Lovejoy in exchange for admittance into Heaven. He was tricked and got admittance into Dog Heaven.

Similar characters

Monty the Miser

Mr. Burns appears in The Simpsons: Bart & the Beanstalk as two characters. He first appears as "Monty the Miser", who provides Bart with both magic beans and a slingshot in exchange for the cow (the latter mostly because Bart refused the magic beans), thus having him set the plot forward. He later appears as the boss of the second level, as a cloud in Mr. Burns' likeness.

Count Burns is a vampire. Lisa says that she is suspicious about him, but no one believes her. She and Bart find Mr. Burns' secret lair, which can be accessed by a staircase that has a lever which doubles as a fun slide, and Bart (while fleeing from a horde of vampires) says, "I know I really shouldn't, but when am I gonna be here again?" before pulling the lever. Unfortunately for him, the horde of vampires are waiting at the bottom of the slide, and Count Burns bites Bart's neck, causing him to turn into a vampire. The Simpsons are then worried that Bart could get worse and they have to kill the head vampire, who is Count Burns. Homer kills Count Burns (who, after getting stabbed in a heart and freaking out, comes back to life to fire Homer, then dies again) but it is revealed that Marge is the head vampire. Just as the vampire versions of Homer, Marge, Bart, Maggie and Grampa are about to bite Lisa, they all say, "Happy Halloween, everyone!" before they all parody the ending scene to A Charlie Brown Christmas.

Video games

Mr. Burns acts as the main antagonist of this game. He rigs the election results of an art competition on The Krusty the Clown Show to have Bart win, as part of his diabolical plan to have his relatives kill off the Simpsons. However, the Simpsons proceed to outsmart every single one of them in China, the North Pole, Egypt, and Hollywood with Mr. Burns, after cutting off ties to his relatives as punishment for their failure, ultimately being forced to swallow his pride and appear on The Krusty the Clown Show to personally congratulate Bart, with Bart proceeding to throw a pie in his face.

Mr. Burns appears as the final boss of this game, operating a giant mechanical robot from within that changes form depending on the damage it receives from the Simpson family. He also was the one who orchestrated Smithers' theft of a diamond, which also indirectly made him responsible for Maggie's kidnapping as well, as Smithers ended up kidnapping Maggie due to the diamond that he stole was knocked towards Maggie after Smithers bumped into Homer and she started using it as a pacifier. After being defeated, Mr. Burns is knocked out unconscious and Maggie then places her pacifier into Mr. Burns' mouth.

Mr. Burns buys out the Springfield Transit System and turns them into nuclear buses. Springfield, in order to buy it back from him, then proceeds to create a for-hire taxi service to raise up enough money to do so, namely $1,000,000. In one of the missions, it is also said that he buys out the Springfield Shopper. Also, if the player drive in the Springfield Mountains, it can drive into Burns Manor. In the last mission, the player has to battle Mr. Burns as Homer, where Homer has to smash the statues in Burns' garden. Also, in the second mission, the player needs to dodge him.

In every single road rage or Sunday drive, he tries to hit the player with his car. However, if the player uses a cheat code, the player can drive his car, a nuclear bus, and even Mr. Burns driving a brick. In the downtown location, his bus depot can be seen. One of the other locations is his nuclear power plant.

Upon collecting $1,000,000, what happens depends on the version of the game. In the GameCube/Xbox/PS2 versions, Mr. Burns, while making clear that he is fed up with the people of Springfield complaining about his nuclear-powered buses and saying that it outranked even the 1967 Summer of Love in terms of most contemptible effort of civil disobedience, caves and lets them have their public transport system back, but then ominously warns the player that they have not seen the last of him before sending the player down his trap door. In the GBA version, he simply expresses shock alongside Smithers when Homer arrives with a crane to drop the $1,000,000 to pay back the transit system.

Mr. Burns appears as a boss, but cannot be fought directly. He accompanies Smithers while he is on the ring, throwing explosive test tubes at the player. Unlike most enemy characters, Smithers and Mr. Burns are not unlockable.

The player can drive to the nuclear power plant in the first level, and Mr. Burns tell everyone bluntly to leave the plant. In addition, Homer investigates Mr. Burns due to suspecting the latter to be potentially being responsible for mysterious black vans popping up over town and spying on people (Homer in particular), with Mr. Burns citing innocence (although he does admit to having arranged to have Amelia Airhart's plane shot down due to being "too big for her jumpers"), and then proceeding to release the hounds on Homer and also requesting that Smithers fire Homer if he did work at the plant.

In the last level, the player can climb up to Mr. Burns' office. The player also sees him in Level 7, where he provides the player with a map containing all of the nuclear waste barrels he buried all over Springfield (although due to Homer saying "aliens", Mr. Burns initially thought he was going to use them to kill off illegal immigrants until Homer clarified that he meant "tentacle aliens") and can eventually drive his car if the player completes the bonus mission in Level 7. He also implies in this level that he had murdered Merriweather, his old business partner and had been haunted by him, since he initially mistaken Homer for his ghost and lets slip his murder of him and causing him to express awkwardness when learning Homer is not his ghost.

In Lisa the Tree Hugger, the player stops Mr. Burns from destroying the ecosystem. Burns plans to cut down every tree in Springfield and turn each one into a single luxury toothpick. When the logging facility is destroyed, Mr. Burns has Smithers phone in some goons to rough up Al Gore to make himself feel better. Later, in Medal of Homer, a younger Mr. Burns steals paintings from Ville de St. Capitulons and protects them on board his personal naval carrier with a squad of sailors that resemble Smithers.

Mr. Burns is one of the characters of the game, and can be unlocked when the player's Springfield is at Level 11 and upon completion of the power plant cooling towers.

Behind the Laughter

Creation

Mr. Burns' appearance in "Homer's Odyssey"

Burns' character, appearance, and mannerisms are based on several different people. The show's creator, Matt Groening, principally based Burns on Fredrik Olsen, a reclusive Norwegian shipping magnate and the owner of Timex. Drawing further inspiration from oil tycoon John D. Rockefeller, David Rockefeller and fictional character Henry Potter from It's a Wonderful Life, Groening made Burns the "embodiment of corporate greed". Animator David Silverman based Burns' appearance on Fox founder Barry Diller, and modeled his body on a praying mantis. The idea of Burns reading employee names off of cards in "There's No Disgrace Like Home" came from an article about Ronald Reagan that writer Al Jean had read. In some episodes, parallels have been drawn between Burns and moguls such as Howard Hughes and, more frequently, fictional character Charles Foster Kane from Citizen Kane. Writer George Meyer lifted Burns' "Excellent!" hand gesture from his former Saturday Night Live partner Jim Downey.

Matt Groening got Burns' middle name from a Montgomery Ward department store in Portland, Oregon's Northwest Industrial district and his surname from Burnside Street, the main thoroughfare in Portland. Burns' first name being Charles is a reference to Charles Foster Kane. In the script for "There's No Disgrace Like Home", Al Jean and Mike Reiss refer to him as "Mr. Meanie".

In Season 2, the writers started to enjoy writing about Smithers and Burns' relationship, and they often pitched episodes with them as the focus, but many never came to fruition.

Voice

Burns was originally voiced by actor Christopher Collins in "Homer's Odyssey". He was soon replaced by Harry Shearer, who has voiced the character ever since. He modeled the voice on Lionel Barrymore and Ronald Reagan. Shearer is also the voice of Smithers and is able to perform dialogue between the two characters in one take. Shearer said that Burns is the most difficult character for him to voice because it is rough on his vocal cords and he often needs to drink tea and honey to soothe his voice. He describes Burns as his favorite character, saying he "like[s] Mr. Burns because he is pure evil. A lot of evil people make the mistake of diluting it. Never adulterate your evil."

The local villain Montgomery Burns, terrorizing children in a 19th century woodcut

Frequent allusions to Mr. Burns' age place his date of birth in the late 19th century, which would make him more than 100 years old. He says he had a driver's license that expired in 1909, graduated from Yale University in 1914, and was depicted in a 19th-century woodcut terrorizing children (which, surprisingly, features him as an old man).[148] Although Burns appears to be younger than Abe Simpson in the World War II flashbacks, he is always older than Abe in all of the other sources. In "Bart Stops to Smell the Roosevelts", Bart sees a photo of Burns being punched by Theodore Roosevelt while Bart is researching him. In this instance, he looks the same as he does today. Mr. Burns has also claimed that he has survived twelve economic recessions, eight panics and five years of McKinleynomics.[149]

Other references to Mr. Burns' age place him at thousands of years old. In "Them, Robot", when Homer and Mr. Burns think they are about to die, Homer asks Burns what his real age is. Although he does not give his age outright, he states, "Well, it's four digits"; if this is true, then Mr. Burns is over a thousand years old. His ATM password, which is the same as his age, is four digits long (although it is possible the first and/or second digits are 0).[150] Mr. Burns' birthplace has also been named as Pangaea.[151]

Also, in his "League of Evil", a group of evildoers from many eras of history, many of the members are quite ancient historically. Since Burns presumably knew all of them before they died, this pushes his age back at least another 500 years, if not much more.[152] Burns' wine cellar also has trophy heads of a dodo, a saber-toothed cat, and a Tyrannosaurus Rex.

However, because his mother, who is currently alive, is 122, Burns would have to be younger. If the age given in "Simpson and Delilah" is correct, then she would have to have given birth to him at around 41 years old.

In The Simpsons Uncensored Family Album, the Simpson family tree shows Mr. Burns on the same row as Abe, meaning that he is probably a similar age to him. Also in the album, there is a news report when Burns was 25 and Abe was 29, making Burns four years younger than Abe.

In "The Mansion Family", Cornelius Chapman received the oldest person in Springfield Award being 108 years old. However, he soon passes on from getting kissed by Britney Spears, so Mr. Burns is the new owner of the award. This means that Mr. Burns has to be younger than 108 years old.

Burns' age provides the writers a character with whom they can express dated humor and references to popular culture before the 1950s. From time to time, he takes up arms against someone he perceives as his enemy, as the joke being his feebleness and the archaic nature of his chosen weapons (i.e. a morning star in his limousine, a blunderbuss, dueling pistols, etc). Familiarity with the use of these weapons dates him considerably far back in history, especially the morning star since this has not been a widely used weapon since the late medieval era.

Trivia

One of his middle names is Schicklgruber. This was the maiden name of Adolf Hitler's paternal grandmother, who later married a man named Hitler who legitimized her son (Hitler's father).

Burns' version of A Bar at the Folies-Bergere

On the Simpson family tree, Mr. Burns is a distant relative of the Simpsons by marriage.

In his cabinet, he has a secret safe that is hidden underneath a painting that looks almost alike A Bar at the Folies-Bergere by Manet, except the waitress has Burns' head. Inside of the safe, Burns hides his Last Will and a human heart in a jar.

Mr. Crocker from The Fairly OddParents is based on Mr. Burns(in terms of both personality and voice), because Butch Hartman is a fan of The Simpsons.

In "When Flanders Failed", it is revealed that Mr. Burns is left-handed. However, he can sometimes be seen writing with his right-hand. He could possibly be ambidextrous (can use both hands for tasks).

Without Smithers, Burns is completely helpless.

There are many possible occurrences that helped Burns gain his wealth. One is that he was raised by a billionaire and inherited his wealth. Another is that he amassed his fortune through his business ownership, from a germ warfare laboratory to a nuclear power plant providing a whole city with energy. It is also possible that the song, White Christmas, was the true reason for Burns's wealth.